Epoch
recoding EPOCH • AVI • 19 H.Y. • HE/HIM • QUESTIONING • LAWFUL NEUTRAL • ILLUSTRATOR, LOST SOUL This holy ground burns my feet. I. APPEARANCE Born a leucistic carrion crow, Epoch is an impure amalgam of both black and white. Lighter patches variegate his dark colouration, especially around his beak, limbs, and throat, where it fades off into his belly. His horns become an off-white as it approaches the tip, and the same colour is woven across his inky primaries and secondaries. His eyes are pale gold and dim; numinous, but not unkind. His posture is slumped, making him appear shorter than he already is. He's not short short, per se, but he does lie a few inches below the average height for a corvid his age. He is very frail and nervous looking. Sharp ribs stick from beneath his meticulously groomed pelt, and closer inspection reveals dark circles and chewed wings. He refuses to explain further. Lunacy did not go unpunished. And he knows what he would be told. Things he's heard a thousand times before, It's because you work too hard, or It's Their test of your faith and character. Secret murmurs passed to his ear, Oh, I know, I feel like that too sometimes... But they don't, they really don't. They don't know how it feels to hold the weight of the heavens on their shoulders, how heavy it sits on his chest. One slip and he will be crushed. The clerical collar around his neck is suffocating, and the cassock wrings his lungs. He has swore an oath unbreakable to never speak of this, to never again fail his Father. II. CONDUCT Quiet, timid, very apologetic. He’s socially inept -- he prefers to stay indoors -- and tends to take things literally. He’s pacifistic and totally sweet, and wants to be some sort of diplomat later in life as unrealistic as it may be. He probably isn’t even close enough to the upper echelons of AviWing society to be one but he has connections -- there was a time when he illuminated holy manuscripts for the royal family’s libraries, but now he spends much of his time in the infirmary with no one to talk to but other patients and nurses. Primarily obsessional OCD > Obsession: Displeasing the angels -- ultimately, divine retribution and eternal damnation. They know. > Compulsion: Excessive prayer Anxious and guilty about the troubles of his family because had he not prayed good enough? Was this a warning. He finds it very difficult to socialize. Paranoid. He pushes others away and rejects advances because what if they find him weird and wired wrong, what if he really is mad, what if he’s found heretical and condemned to exile, or worse, what about his family -- Feels shame and self hate because he’s not supposed to like boys, he’s supposed to be good and moral and perfect, and he’s not supposed to be afraid of the angels of all things, damn it! He’s dirty dirty dirty, and all he could do is beg for forgiveness. additional stuff to include somewhere being born leucistic as well as a corvid, saw himself as unclean (the royal family may have wiped the reputation of that...bird family but he knows how the others look at him.) he hides from the eyes of the people as much as the angels afraid of the king and queen honestly. probably will fall for a prince lmao what an absolute fool. welcome to drama, III. STORY Epoch was born into a long line of lawyers, doctors, and priests, and is the eldest son of a powerful archbishop. AviWing doctrine was ingrained into his mind from the day he hatched; be good now, son, lest the angels smite us all. Don’t be greedy. Say thank you, pray after your catch, for every meal and every drink. Be grateful. Be humble. Be lawful. Common sense, really, and he did what everyone expected out of him. He was to marry a nice dragoness, live a full life, and die a devout and happy man -- it was the family creed. A dragonet of exemplary faith gifted in all things art, Epoch quickly grew to be the pride of his family. He was kind and polite and loving, and loved the mercy of the angels above all. His designs decorated the windows of cathedrals, and he was soon recruited into the palace as an illuminator of text. probably expand on being prodigious organ player But all was not as it seemed. Over the years his worship corrupted into a obsession, and diseased fear overcame his love for the divine. Thoughts began to manifest, flitting images of his family incinerated, torn apart, in pieces, in ways he dared not fathom. Bodies, bare, pallid; visions of a crumbling crater where his Father’s diocese once stood. They came to him in his sleep just as often, haunting his mind and burning themselves at the back of his eyelids. Before bed and in the morning he prayed and begged, that the angels forgave him for this dubiety, that the angels took these wicked thoughts away, that the angels clean his soul of these hungry demons. Was he was asking for too much? Missing meals and avoiding events were obvious causes for concern, if not suspicion. What was he up to? Anything could be going on -- rituals, paganism, heresy. So when Father went up to his room and found him unconscious on the floor from fasting and dehydration, the first thing Epoch did when he awoke was confess, and implore Father not to exile or heavens forbid, execute him. Like water from a broken dam the words spilled out of his mouth -- the dread, the apprehension, the intrusive images, how he thanked the angels before every morsel he ate, every time he entered a room, after he bathed -- how he must pray or the angels will punish them all. Father was understanding. He admitted Epoch into the Royal Infirmary, for he was sick, if not in the body then in the mind. Rest, my boy, he had said, and return to us when you are well again. An act of good intention, but he could not help but feel like Father was ashamed of a son who had fallen so far. Father had to rid of this… disgrace, this taint in their good name, or the angels would do to them what the scrolls had so explicitly described, what he had so carefully rendered before. He continues his studies from the infirmary, but the palace has long since removed him from his position. He now records medicinal recipes and practices in scrolls to be distributed to smaller healing centers as well as schools. Acquiring the job wasn’t simple, either; it took much coaxing to get the nurses to let him out of his dorm. He now works with them, and takes herbs to assuage some of his anxiety. It is at the infirmary where he meets a witty woodworker, a desc. who lingered for far too long in his thoughts. text IV. PROWESS V. DIPLOMACY Please ask if you wish to have a roleplay with this character. Shipping is open, but keep in mind Epoch is hesitant to mingle with others, much less have a relationship. Fane: big gay Category:Characters Category:Content (ZzzSleepyCreeper) Category:AviWings Category:Males Category:Occupation (Artist) Category:Mentally Unwell Category:Work In Progress